By Isabella Vale, Founder of Tarot Masters
Long before I lived on a jungle island or founded Tarot Masters, I was just a seeker in her twenties, holding a backpack and a wide open heart, boarding a flight to India.
I didn’t go there to find myself, though that’s what happened. I went because something inside me felt restless and soft at the same time. I was beginning to hear the whisper of a deeper life, and India called to me like a memory I hadn’t yet lived.
I had no grand plan. Just a notebook, a few names scribbled from travel blogs, and a longing to sit still in places that held centuries of spirit.
Rishikesh: The River That Listens
One of my first stops was Rishikesh, nestled at the foothills of the Himalayas, where the Ganges runs wild and holy.
I stayed in a quiet ashram with whitewashed walls and cold morning floors. Each day began with chanting and chai, then long hours of sitting cross-legged in satsang, my Western mind slowly learning how to be quiet.
But the real teachings came down by the river.
I would sit by Ma Ganga for hours, watching the way the water sparkled even when the sky was gray. I had never seen a river worshipped before. People bathed in her, spoke to her, fed her flowers. And somewhere in that reverence, something inside me softened. I stopped needing answers. I just listened.
One day, after a long meditation, a sadhu with eyes like molten honey told me, “When you listen long enough, the mountain will speak. But first, you must stop shouting your questions at it.”
I wrote that in my journal. I still read it sometimes.
Dharamshala: Silence and the Sound of My Own Thoughts
Further north, I took a slow, winding bus ride to Dharamshala, home to the Dalai Lama and many Tibetan monks in exile. The air was cooler there, pine-scented and crisp. Prayer flags danced between trees, and the mountains stood like kind elders in the distance.
I signed up for a ten day silent meditation retreat without really knowing what I was getting into. The silence wasn’t hard. What was hard was being alone with my own thoughts.
The first three days, I wanted to leave. I cried in my room. My mind screamed, circled, replayed things I thought I’d forgotten. But then, on day four, something clicked. Or maybe unraveled.
I remember sitting in stillness, the sun warming my shoulders through the window, and suddenly there was nothing. No judgment. No noise. Just a soft, vast peace that stretched beyond words.
That moment changed me. It reminded me that we are not our thoughts. We are the space beneath them.
Varanasi: Where Life and Death Hold Hands
Before leaving India, I spent a few days in Varanasi. It’s not an easy city. It’s intense, ancient, sacred, chaotic. Life spills out in every direction. Cows in the street, incense in the air, bodies wrapped in marigolds being carried to the burning ghats.
I watched a cremation ceremony from the edge of the steps, surrounded by locals who had seen a thousand such moments. I had never felt death that close. And strangely, I didn’t feel fear. I felt reverence. Clarity. A kind of sacred surrender.
That night, I lit a tiny diya, a clay lamp, and set it afloat on the river, whispering a prayer I didn’t fully understand. It felt like a goodbye, but also a beginning.
What India Gave Me
India didn’t give me a linear story or a single lesson. It gave me pieces. Seeds. Sacred mirrors.
It taught me that not all truths are meant to be spoken out loud. That not all healing is pretty. That the divine can live in a beggar’s smile, a bowl of dal, a chant you don’t understand but feel in your bones.
Most of all, it taught me presence.
That trip was the beginning of my devotion, not just to spirit, but to listening. To simplicity. To silence. It planted the roots that eventually led me to tarot, to healing, to Koh Phangan, to the woman I am now.
I still carry a few small stones from that journey. One from the Ganges. One from the Dharamshala trail. When I hold them, I remember. I remember who I was before the world told me who to be.
And I remember that sometimes, the real pilgrimage is not to find answers but to become quiet enough to feel the truth that has been waiting inside us all along.
With incense smoke and mountain echoes
Isabella Vale